The Mass & Fieber Story

MASS & FIEBER was conceived as a label for multimedia events by Niklaus Helbling, Martin Gantenbein and Walter Stulzer sometime in the Nineties before turning to theatrical work in 1998. Joining forces with friends and artists from the areas of music, dance, theatre and literature, the collective of thirty-somethings immediately had a smash hit with their first theatre production BAMBIFIKATION, with awards from the Impulse Festival and the Bodensee Festival. In the nine years since, MASS & FIEBER has produced eight plays, various performances pieces, two radio plays and several musical evenings, and has been called „cult", a „theatre wonder" and „Switzerland's most intelligent theatre collective" by the press. Plays and performances have been staged in theatres, music clubs, an empty pig pen, on meadows, open air festival areas, and, for the Swiss National Exhibition, on a large party boat. With the exception of several commission pieces, plays and performances are generally produced by MASS & FIEBER and abetted by the welcome sponsoring from national, state and private institutions. The plays have toured extensively in Switzerland, Germany, Austria and, on one occasion, Portugal.

On the job: THE TEAM

The formative team in MASS & FIEBER projects consists in director and author Niklaus Helbling who in the last years has directed plays at the Burg Theater in Vienna, the Schauspielhaus Zürich and city theatres from Hamburg and Bochum to Frankfurt and Dresden. Co-founder, composer and musician Martin Gantenbein works in theatre, radio and teaches at the Actor’s School Zürich and is a defining musical force in all MASS & FIEBER projects while also handling the business side of things. Set designer Dirk Thiele was included in a list of the 50 most important set designers in Germany by the Goethe Institute and has been working with Helbling for ten years. The versatile singer/songwriter and composer Markus Schönholzer is a mainstay in MASS & FIEBERs songwriting as well as on stage and an acclaimed composer of musicals and music shows in Germany and Switzerland. His latest band project (Gantenbein plays drums) is called "Pop Food". Actress Fabienne Hadorn is the formative acting presence in MASS & FIEBER, while producing her own plays with the group Kolypan. Essential MASS & FIEBER choreographer Salome Schneebeli has worked internationally as a dancer and choreographer and is currently the head of the dance company Schneebeli. Judith Steinmann, just turned 30, can be relied on for the defining twists in MASS & FIEBER'S costume design and is much in demand for films and state theatre productions in Switzerland, Vienna and Germany. Coming from outside the theatre, Brigitte Helbling is a journalist, editor and writer based in Hamburg but leaves civilian life behind her when MASS & FIEBER beckons. Her text collaborations with Niklaus Helbling include the exclusive right to most songtexts and to many spur-of-the-moment fabrications which tend to end up in the beautiful graphic material and programme books Thomas Rhyner insists on assembling inbetween stints of jetting around the world as art director and catalogue designer for international artists and art shows.

MASS & FIEBER visions and projects have been implemented with a large variety of hugely talented, very beautiful and musically gifted actors and actresses (see "menschen"). Roles are usually written with certain performers in mind. These change from project to project. Björn Salzer handles our lighting design with a rare sensitivity, which also can be heard in the sound design of, for the current productions, Mike Hasler. On tour and during project development, technical manager Peter Affentranger provides reliable and creatively stabilizing support in all things concerning Thieles set designs. Our highly qualified and flexible team of assistents is key to the efficiency and bright mood on the job.